


ice cold

by arieolia



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: :re, M/M, Reaper!Kaneki, and feeling guilty about a lot too, he's looking for a lot of things, or whatever we're calling him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 06:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5733427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arieolia/pseuds/arieolia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Between working for the CCG, trying not to care for Touka, looking for the woman who loves him and wondering if Hide is still alive, Kaneki has a lot in his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ice cold

**Author's Note:**

> Since I wrote this entirely on my phone over the period of a few weeks, there might some mistakes scattered around.

The wind is barely a whisper in his ear. His hair keeps falling in front of his face, and it's still strange to see black strands instead of white, even a month after turning back. He pushes a hand against his forehead and pushes back all the hair, pulling the pesky lengths that have strayed past his glasses and pokes his eyes. The black coat around him rustles as the wind begins to pick up, the ends flapping towards the door of the cafe as though even the wind was calling him in.

He sighs, long and hard, and adjusts his gloves in a quick, sudden movement as he presses his hand against the cool metal handle of the door. It opens silently, and he has to take a breath as he walks in.

Before, when his memories were still bits and pieces of a puzzle that didn't make any sort of picture, entering this cafe was simple. Normal. But now, remembering everything he'd experienced as himself and as Haise, the cafe made him feel dizzy and disgustingly nostalgic. So much so that he could feel his lips rise at the corners and his eyes water.

He blinks quickly. He lets the door close behind him and walks towards an empty table, his strides long. The chair is comfortable, and he can feel his back long to slouch, but he refuses. It stays rigid.

He stares forward, and waits.

\----------

"Haven't seen you in a while." He hears. A lamented piece of card appears in front of his face - a menu, with small pictures to go with each column of writing. "So, new hairdo?" He tilts his head and glances up, towards the voice. He already knows who it is - the voice may have matured over the years, but it's unmistakable. Above him stands Touka, in her usual maid's dress, her eyes the same shade of purple as they had been years ago. She's grown, but he already knows that. Still, it shocks him. Her height, her face, her smile.

Mostly, and oddly, it's her hair. It's thicker and lighter than when she was younger. He decides he likes it. It takes him a moment to control his face from smiling (or maybe crying, he's not sure).

She smiles at him, and when he doesn't take the menu she drops it onto the table. "Going for the usual? Should have known, you don't seem the type to like change."

"You know I'm not the type for change," he says. Whispers, really. The sound barely travels into his own ears.

"Sorry?" Touka asks. She leans lower and tilts her head to stare into his eyes and then -  
"Oh."

\-----------

"So I guess you've chosen your side, Kaneki."

Kaneki stares at her, takes a sip of his coffee, and says nothing. Touka sighs heavily from across the table and rubs a hand against her temple. They'd moved away from the customers, and to somewhere at the back of the cafe, a staff room of some sort. It's design was inspired by Anteiku, Kaneki was sure. It hurts to even sit in there.

She scowls, and though her hair covers most of it up, Kaneki can still see the edges of it, her lips curling. He thought she had changed - she has, but teenage Touka is still brimming somewhere inside her.

"God," she groans, "you've changed. Again." Kaneki stays silent. "Who was it this time?"

That makes Kaneki wonder. How does she know? How can she know that it was somebody - that somebody had done something to him to make him change? She must have seen his confusion, because she glances at him and sighs for the millionth time.

"It's always someone, Kaneki." She says. From a pocket somewhere on her person, she pulls out a small drawstring bag. Within it are large brown sugar cubes - Kaneki remembers them. He's still not sure what they're made of. He's also not sure he wants to know.

Touka drops three into her mug, the black surface of the coffee rippling. Kaneki can see, from the way she eyes the bag for a moment too long, that she is hungry. He doesn't bother to remind her to eat. He's learning not to care.

Trying not to.

"People are always changing you. I was one of them - remember, when I got you to eat? And you just let me do it. God, you barely struggled." Kaneki fights a scowl. Touka was so much stronger than he was back then. The chances of him taking her down were almost zero! Why does she think he's still so - no emotions, he reminds himself. "And Rize. She really changed you. In so many ways. And that bastar--" she stops, and then takes a breath before she continues. "Yamori, Tsukiyama, hell, even Hinami. Anyone can change you, Kaneki. So who was it this time?"

He pulls at the fingers of his left glove and adjusts it, once, twice and three times. Touka watches him as she stirs her coffee, her one visible eye staring into him. It's good, but Kaneki isn't intimidated. Touka has nothing on Arima's stare or his poker face.

He trusts her, he decides, and his mouth opens and the words spew out quietly and it's only in hindsight that he realises just how broken it sounds.

"She said she loved me."

Touka's eyes widen for a moment, and then she sees the way his eyes glisten and she shakes her head and laughs softly to herself.

"God," she sighs, and Kaneki wonders when that had become her catchphrase, "you're so easy to break."

_youre so easy to break Kaneki you're weak so fucking weak Kaneki so weak fucking weak you need to get stronger you're so weak everyone around is going to fucking die shirazu died because of you_

He blinks. He turns his gaze ahead. He pulls his shoulders back and presses his spine straight against the chair. He brings his cup to his lips and drinks. He can feel a tear run down his cheek, but he doesn't wipe it away. It might have dissolved into his drink - and how poetic would that have been - but he isn't sure.

Touka looks at him and scowls. This time she doesn't use her hair as a mask. "You're not some ghoul hiding from the CCG anymore, Kaneki. Get the mask off your face."

Without another word, she leaves the room, hair bobbing as she strides away.

After another sip, Kaneki follows.

\----------------

Urie is there. Mutsuki and Saiko are, too, but Urie's far ahead and they're so far back, walking faster to reach him. (He was getting better, Kaneki remembered. He used to walk with them.)

_what have you done what have you done what have you done_

They round the corner of the hallway, and just as they turn Kaneki catches a glimpse of their faces. Saiko's face is pale and her pace is slow. Kaneki can just about make out the reddish tinge to the whites of her eyes. Mutsuki's skin makes it hard to tell, but there's a dark circle around his eye and he's blinking erratically.

Suddenly, Mutsuki's eye shifts in Kaneki's direction, and in a flutter of black, Kaneki walks away. He hopes Mutsuki hasn't caught him, but just in case he walks down the hallways and towards the opposite side of the building. He turns his head ever so slightly, and he can see that no one is trailing behind him.

He keeps walking anyway and everywhere he does, the white walls that clash against his clothing seem to scream at him.

_what have you done what have you done what have you done_  
\--------

The ghoul's neck breaks easily under the strain of his kagune, wrapped around their neck. He holds them for a moment longer, and once they have stopped struggling, once their body goes limp and their head flops, he releases them. They drop with a thud to the ground, and some nearby investigator checks over the body.

Kaneki turns away. He pulls at the fingers of his gloves, then pulls them back down. Once, twice, three times. His kagune - as they dance around him, piercing nothing but the air - retreat back into his body. He glances at them as they shrink, and a single eye stares back at him.

He looks away.

"Who sent us to take down this ghoul, Furuta-san?" Kaneki asks, politely, coldly. Arima-ly. Furuta smiles and takes a step closer. He'd moved away during the fight, like the rest of the investigators, but he hadn't been further than a few feet.

"Oh," he said, "Washuu-san decided you needed a break. Let you go for this small fry."

Kaneki stays silent. He walks over to Furuta, who just smiles as he walks past, and his shoulder brushes against his.

"It's odd, don't you think?" Furuta continues as Kaneki walks further away. He raises his voice so Kaneki can hear him clearly. "That Washuu-san knows you so well!" His voice trails and he sighs dramatically. "If only he knew me that well. Maybe I wouldn't be paired up with weirdos for boss'."

Kaneki wants to sigh. All Furuta does is complain about him, always finding some way to moan about it.

He's right, though. It's amazing how well Washuu-san has been making decisions regarding Kaneki. It might still irk him that he's being controlled, but since the higher rank was making it hard to get angry at... Kaneki doesn't know what to think.

\--------

He's here again. The doors have faint fingerprints along their handles and people are busying themselves, drinking coffee and chatting to others. Kaneki feels something like envy rush through him: even when he was human, the only one he could really talk to was Hide.

Hide.

He schools his expression and walks in. Some people stop talking, turn to stare at him as he comes in. Maybe because of his almost entirely black outfit, or maybe because of his tell-tale briefcase. Kaneki doesn't really care. (If he did, he would decide it was probably his clothes. Briefcases are still pretty widely used by people who weren't CCG.)

The same seat that he sat in last time beckons him. Kaneki doesn't fight it's pull, doesn't even try to. He lets his legs stride their way to the seat, allows his knees to bend and excuses his back when it presses against the chair.

It smells and feels too much like Anteiku to force himself to stay stiff. He'd learned that last time he'd been here. Still, though his body refuses to cooperate in this place, he forces his mind not to bring up any old memories. He's not here for nostalgia.

"Well look who's back," someone says, and, like last time, it doesn't even take a second to register the voice. Unlike last time, however, Kaneki turns to meet her gaze straight away.

Purple meets grey.

She seems to have simmered down from her calm outburst that she'd had the last time he'd seen her. Another difference, Kaneki notes, about this Touka is that she can control herself and her emotions much better than teen Touka could. It's both a blessing and a curse - Kaneki realises he's always sort of liked Touka's brutal honesty. But now, seeing how easily she can put a calm front over her frustration, he's not sure he can believe what she says anymore.

"Back again," Kaneki says, and tries to smile a little - fake, of course, and Kaneki knows it would be an insult to even think she would fall for it. Touka doesn't smile back. She pushes her spare menu into a pocket in the skirt of her maid outfit, and pushes back some hair with a sigh. (Adult Touka always seems so tired, Kaneki notices.) 

"Alright," she glances at the clock, "my shift ends at five. That's half an hour, think you can wait? We can use the back room to talk about it."

Kaneki nods, Touka scowls and then she walks away.

Kaneki's eyes follow her form - she stalks over to the counter and speaks to - Yomo, he realises, as the ghoul glances over at him in the same monotonous way he always has and then looks back at Touka and nods. (He hasn't spoken to him in years, hasn't spoken to anyone he used to in a long, long while. His heart shudders.)

Touka glances back at him and then turns back with a swish of her hair. She pushes the door to the staff room and disappears inside.

'Doesn't she have to work?' Kaneki thinks, but turns away. It's not up to him to choose when Touka talks to him. He's done so much to hurt her, hurt everyone, so he should give her this much at least.

God, he knows he's lucky just being allowed to talk to her, let alone being allowed into :re.

He sits at the seat quietly, doing all that he can not to move, just incase he causes some unwanted memories to float to the surface of his mind. He can't decide whether to think of many things, to clog up the route for other memories, or if he should think of nothing, to make it easier to pick out the memories as they come, to bob his head into the water of his mind and bite out the thoughts and throw them away.

He bites the inside of his cheek, and it bleeds - a sensation, something like pain, maybe, tingles. Kaneki likes it. He likes the taste too. The blood seeps from where he'd gnawed, coating his tongue, creeping between his molars. It's disgusting and delicious and he wants 

_more, he wants something thicker, more solid, more chewy, more tender - he wants flesh because god he's so hungry so so hungry and his stomach cries at night more than he does more than_

water, to wash it all down. He doesn't want to open his mouth by accident and reveal his blood stained teeth. Kaneki knows that this blood, at the very least, he can wash off easily.

He pulls at his gloves again, one finger, two fingers, three fingers, and then he hears the clink of china in front of him, and when he turns his head, slowly and calmly, he finds Yomo there, watching him. Staring as he always did. Silent as he always was.

"Yomo-san," Kaneki says and for a moment he feels there is something else he should say. He doesn't know what. An apology, perhaps, or a thanks, for training him? "Thank you for the coffee." He continues, instead, smoothly. Yomo says nothing in response and slides into the seat in front of Kaneki.

It is silent.

Kaneki lifts his slightly trembling fingers and picks up the hot cup. Yomo watches. The half-ghoul takes a slow sip, careful to keep his lips close enough to together so that the metallic blood doesn't mix with the bitter coffee. He glimpses down and sees the way dark red swirls in with the beverage, like muddied water in clean, and knows he has failed.

The taste is familiar. This is that brand - the name that's on the tip of his tongue, and he's so ready to twist his lips and curl his tongue and name it, but he can't - the brand that he had drank always, unfailingly, at Anteiku all those years ago. All that time ago. It was his favourite once upon a time. Now the comforting flavour is just another grain of sand, which Kaneki's ever shifting tides have swept away. 'God,' Kaneki thinks, 'so much has changed.'

Yomo stares, unmoving and frozen. Kaneki flicks his gaze at the ghoul. That's his goal. Yomo is like ice. Kaneki is like water. He wants to freeze. He hates this, the wavering, the ever shifting feeling of being who he is. The constant tremors that come from changing all the fucking time. He wants to be frozen. He wants to be still.

The time passes with them sitting there in silence. It crawls and staggers, it's pace uneven and messy like a drunk man's. Some seconds pass by like the wind and others seem to cling to the present, like a murdered soul to it's grave. Kaneki drinks, rationing out his coffee to avoid any lengthy conversation (though that's unlikely to ever become a problem, having known Yomo), and Yomo sits and watches and very, very occasionally stands up to help serve customers.

Now is one of those blissful moments: Yomo's gone with a tray in hand, towards a group of teenagers who quiet down the moment he walks by, and Kaneki allows himself to bathe in the solidarity. Free of the awkwardness only he seemed to feel, he loosens up a little. He allows his elbows to press against the table and he watches the people in the restaurant.

Kaneki sniffs. Passed the distinct aroma of bitter coffee and sandwiched between the scent of human flesh and perfume or deodorant of some sort was the gross ( _mouthwatering_ ) waft of ghoul. It teases Kaneki, seeming to drift directly to his nose. 

_I am ice I am ice cold_

They don't seem to hire human employees, Kaneki sees. It would cause problems, of course. Humans getting involved with ghouls in any way outside of being food was risky for both sides. Anteiku hadn't either, despite the manager's love for them, so he hasn't expected much else. Like father like daughter, he guesses.

He wonders if the daughter restaurant has the same role as the father. Kaneki tilts his head towards the back door and remembers passing through. The staff room was the third door on the left down the hallway and he presumes the other rooms are either restrooms or lead to wherever Touka sleeps and lives.

He wonders if somewhere within those walls is a freezer filled with flesh. His stomach murmurs and he begs for Touka to appear soon, because it's so hard to wait for her. He's so hungry and being in a cafe like this isn't a good idea.

As though listening to his thoughts, a slightly more disheveled Touka appears from the doorway. She plays with her hair for a few moments, running her hands through and pushing the layers back until her hair is neater than before. Touka glances up, scans over the customers, her expression like water as it melts into various versions of her happy, sad and neutral face. 

Her eyes land on Kaneki and he can't read what her expression means. She's biting her lip ever so slightly and her eyebrows are twisted with anger or confusion. She puts out her hand and waves him over.

Yomo is there beside her, suddenly, and he whispers something even Kaneki cannot hear, not with the cacophony around him. Saiko may have been able to, she was good at this - Kaneki watches them as they converse and Touka seems tired and sad. Yomo puts a hand on Touka's shoulder in an odd show of care and then turns around and walks towards where Kaneki sits. His apron makes a swishing sound as he moves.

"You can go to her," he says and sits back at the seat in front Kaneki. "She's finished now."

'Finished what?' Is what Kaneki thinks but doesn't dare to speak. How rude would that be? To disappear for three years and then demand answers for every little thing, as though he deserved to know. He looks at Touka instead, who, as Kaneki's eyes meet her's, begins to open the door and leave.

As Touka disappears again, and as Kaneki rises to follow her, pulling at the fingers of his gloves and silently gnawing at the inside of his cheek, he glances at Yomo through his glasses. The ghoul has slid the cup of coffee towards himself and gazes into the slight reflection, and what he sees Kaneki can't tell. Perhaps his eyes, his face, or maybe something else. But the man sits back with his eyes slipping shut, his hands still leaning against the surface of the table, his fingers tracing the lip of the china and he sighs, softly and quietly, like the man he is.

"You've changed." He murmurs. Kaneki feels like glass for a moment; see through; transparent. Yomo's eyes open up, just a slit, and Kaneki can feel his grey eyes follow him as he walks after Touka.

He wonders, not for the first time or for the last time, how people have come to know him so well.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how well I got the characters but this my first attempt and practice makes perfect right?
> 
> I'm so also currently feeling very guilty about not updating my zombie apocalypse au...I'll probably update later. Maybe. 
> 
> Please leave kudos if you think this deserves one. Also, if you decide to leave a comment, please add in some advice for better writing. Even a little thing such as more description or a higher word count per chapter would be great, though I'd really like some more in depth advice on symbolism and writing action. I'm only thirteen and my curriculum doesn't focus on creative writing.


End file.
